Today Nikon released the D800 and D800N, and right away you see the same nonsens that came when Canon released the 1DX (or 5D, or 1Ds MkIII, or Nikons D3X, etc) that “It will now give medium format a run for it’s money”.

Now it’s understandable that people really want to get into the MF world with their smaller sensor-system, in fact for those of you who are old buggers like i am will remember the same exact discussion and desire when we talked film cameras. However reality is a bit different and a high megapixel count does not make a great imagefile, in fact it can actually be a problem =) Note now, that we will be talking about imagefile-quality, not image-quality. A badly executed picture on MF will look really bad (or even worse ;) on MF aswell as on the smaller formats.

I will also butcher the terminology a little and use megapixels since thats simply what everyone is using. What you should be looking is photosites and photosite-density which is the more interesting part of the equation.

To give a very quick (and butchered ;) summary what happens when you take a picture is that the light comes in through the lens, the photosite (the actual physical “cell” on the sensor) records the light level, this is also repeated with colourfilters infront to record different colourchannels (red & blue) and usually the third channel (green) is then calculated from this. For the techies out there, this is a very simplified description and the technique varies depending on sensor-type and manifacturer but this will suffice to give a rough estimate whats happening.

Once the raw data comes in, it still needs to be processed before it can be even saved as what we call RAW files since it’s now filled with loads of noise from where the sensors record light that overlaps eachother and get interference. Moiré, diffraction issues, signal-to-noise ratios all come into play here, and the image processor needs to do some serious calculations to reduce the noise in the signal (data) that comes from the sensor.

Since the light hitting the sensor is a physical reality, if you make bigger photosites (bigger sensor, less density, less photosites on the area) then the noise and interefence is lessened making it easier to create a better imagefile. And here we come to the biggest issue when it comes to image quality, sensor size, or rather the photosite density. Theoretically you can have a small sensor with a low density of photosite and get a really good image signal, only drawback is that it will also generate a very small file even if it will be very low on noise ;)

And likewise, if we increase the density of the photosites, aka. cramming more megapixels into a sensor without increasing the physical size of the sensor, you will get more noise to deal with. To deal with this there needs to be a LOT of filtering and processing done before you get to see the image, and all that processing tends to degrade the actual signal since it needs to be analyzed and cleaned of noise and small detail can often be lost in this process.

So the general rule is, more megapixel, same sensorsize, more noise, more processing and this is generally baaaaaad.

So why is megapixel even being used as a sales argument today? Well two reasons i think; first off they can get away with it because a lot of people dont know or care what actually makes an optimal imagefile, and secondly because its an excellent marketingtool. A number is a perfect tool for the marketingpeople since simply, larger number == better. That is something most people can relate to, bigger engine with more horsepower, faster car, more megaherz in your CPU, faster computer. Of course, reality is different also with those analogies aswell as they are also marketing ploys ;D

Another thing that i noticed in Nikons new lineup is that they now offer a version without the antialias filter on (The D800E), something that have been requested by the user base for a long time, mostly because there are a few medium format sensors that is sold without an AA filter, giving you sharper images. Drawback of this is that you will have more noise in the signal being let through, and interference patterns such as moiré is usually a big issue. So if you are shooting something without fine patterns then it’s awesome, you will have ultrasharp pictures right away. If you are shooting business suits you are in a world of hurt (and hours of post-processing hell ;).

So, just to give you an perspective. I shoot with a Canon EOS 5d mkII right now, weighing in at 21 MP and a Phase One P25 wheighing in at 22 MP. The imagequality in the 5D is excellent, but not even close to the P25. The P25 however is one clunky mother (well, technically the camera its attached to is ;) and forget about shooting fast paced action with it or anything with the potential of moiré interference. So i use both my cameras but for different shoots and allthough i have a lot of things i would love to see in my next camerasystem (faster AF being one of the #1 ;), the filesize is not one of those things. The 21/22 MP files i get are very high quality in both, do i need more MP? Hell no. Most of my clients print in magazines and/or the web, you could have shot this with a 10MP camera aswell ;) And i could go on another rant regarding how DPI works and how few who seem to know what to do with it in todays DTP world but that will be a later topic ;)

So is the D800 and D800E a good camera? Oh i’m sure it produces excellent images, probably rivalling the D3X and 1DX cameras and everyone who buys one will be very pleased with their purchase. Will it destroy Canon? Hell no, just as the next Canon model that is released won’t destroy Nikon. Will it destroy the medium format market? Hell no to this aswell. Megapixel count does not make a small sensor system into a large sensor system, you need to physically increase the sensorsize and lenses aswell, and lo and behold, we have the Leica S2 system ;) No longer a small format, and not a medium format, but a hybrid.

Now Canon is probably going to announce their 5D MK3 soon, and i HOPE they do not jump on the MP bandwagon and further dillute the discussion that Nikon seems to have done now. Technically they can cram a 100MP sensor onto a small compact camera, but it will be virtually useless due to the noise and interference, but it can be done ;D

Doesnt mean they should however.

Now lets go out and make some good images instead and not bother so much about the imagefiles ;)